We’ve Helped Patients Work With Teletherapy And Online Therapy For Years
We have been answering questions about NYC online therapy for years, even before we enhanced our remote therapy options in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. People go on vacations, work trips, go to school out of state, need to stay at the office, the trains aren’t running one week, or patients move out of the area and don’t want to slow down the consistency and momentum of the therapeutic work. Online therapy and phone therapy have been a major part of our NYC practice in our Tribeca and Park Slope, Brooklyn therapy offices for a long time.
While we have generally just answered questions about remote therapy in NYC as they came up, we wanted to create a quick FAQ about distance counseling and video therapy. Below are the three most common questions we get with regard to video therapy/online therapy. We may be adding to this list as more questions come up so be on the lookout!:
1. Logistically, how does video therapy work?
We have a range of experience levels with video chat platforms among our patients—from those who use Zoom and Google Meet every day for work to those who have never used either before. We are interested in making video chat therapy sessions work as easily for you as possible, wherever you are on that continuum. Typically, we will send out an invite to Zoom, Google Meet, or another HIPAA compliant platform, and from there, you can just select to enter the meeting.
2. What if there are connection issues?
This happens from time to time on remote therapy sessions, but it tends not to be as big of an issue as people think. Sometimes it means asking someone to repeat themselves, but that can happen in in-person therapy as well. Other times there is a slight lag that is easy to accommodate. We have invested in quite good software and Internet connectivity services so these issues don’t come up that often in our online therapy sessions. Of course when they do and when they feel too disruptive, switching to phone therapy is a very good alternative.
3. Do you do online therapy sessions with new patients?
Yes! Video therapy (and phone therapy) is a much more intimate experience than people expect and works extremely well with getting to know individuals, couples, and families. Some of our therapists have patients they started with over video conferencing therapy who they have been seeing for awhile, and only a bit over half of them have ever actually been to our Tribeca or Park Slope, Brooklyn offices.